Arithmetic
by livblaines
Summary: Fact one: Blaine is a conniving, sleazy, undead jerk. Fact two: She does not trust him. Fact three: She - has not had sex with anything that didn't vibrate in over six months.


One party.

Take her life, subtract one stupid mistake of a boat party – that she _knew_, by the way, she should opt clear out of – and antisocial-zombie-disorder would have stayed far, far away from the equation that is her life. Happy marriage. Perfect job. No midnight brain-cravings.

Pre-Infection-Liv didn't even watch _The Walking Dead_, for crying out loud.

Prodding another bite of hippocampus to her fork, Post-Death-Liv frowns her thoughts away with a long gulp of hot sauce.

But you know what they say about instincts.

(She doesn't, actually, but the brain of mugging-victim and former math teacher Mimi Williams insists that no one ever trusts them until long after they've ignored them.)

(Liv has reason to agree.)

Take her life, subtract one boat party, and Major wouldn't have just left for an Aruba honeymoon with another woman. A woman with skin that tans, hair that highlights, and dietary needs that don't require a morgue.

Mid-swallow, she pours another heavy glaze of hot sauce over her fork. It drips past the teaspoon nibble of Mimi William's brain, past the noodles surrounding it, past the slope of her fingers. It paints her wrist bloody.

The ceremony had, of course, been perfectly planned, perfectly orchestrated, perfectly lovely. And she had been the ever so perfect guest.

One bite later, she's scraping every bit of it onto the tip of her tongue, desperate to taste _something_. To feel anything other than Major's wedding sledgehammering whatever's left of her brain jumbled.

Stitching a smile to her pale lips – lipstick, she'd found, only makes her look ghoulish – and offering congratulations upon congratulations upon best wishes would rank as a low point of her life. Closely followed by eye rolling her way through reassuring Peyton that she was fine, just fine, one hundred percent okay with the wedding band glinting from not-her finger.

Licking her own skin for remnants of hot sauce hardly ranks in context.

The door opens. Liv's hands, still sticky, snap back to the tabletop.

"Bit late to be working." She doesn't have to look up to identify the white-blonde, chalk-skinned, sleaze ball of an intruder. Her eyes trace the sound of his footsteps to his face anyway. "Mind if I stop in, Doc?"

Subtract one night from her life, and she would have no reason to grind her teeth aching over a zombie drug dealer. "I'm not a doctor," she answers with all the life she lacks. _Because of him_. "And this is private property."

Blaine's hair looks whiter in the dim light, his skin luminescent. A scowl sipping at her lips, Liv traces her hair from her face. She hates every inch of common ground between them.

"Right," he drawls, sliding a finger against the one of the morgue's cool slabs. The corners of her mouth shrug. Probably cool. She can't actually tell anymore. "You know, that's the problem with our generation. No concept of hospitality."

The heels of her palms fold against her lap, twitching against her locked knees. Standing would require energy. Liv raises her arms in a cinched cross against her chest. Sitting could be taken as an invitation, an encouragement, to join her. She forces her legs loose and from her stool, into steps that fall firmer than she feels. "Sure. _That's_our moral problem."

His palms straighten, rise, and freeze in a mockery of surrender. Liv rolls her eyes. It looks about as natural on him as a pair of aged overall and Keds. "Hey, guns down. I didn't put my sensitive yet gritty screenplay on hold for a western stand-off. Much as I do appreciate a good Eastwood homage every now and then." He grins like he's on a freaking sitcom, like she should join him.

Liv's teeth grind as his lips spread. She doesn't.

"Yeah, thanks, but I'll keep my 'guns' in the air however long I like." She blinks before she can think better of it, before she remembers the sting humming her eyes red. "Can we switch metaphors, maybe? Something less cliché?"

"Hey," he protests without any genuine feeling whatsoever. She's not entirely sure that he _has_feelings. And, yes, that's a rather extreme generalization, but she's bitter and wallowing and Major-less and pretty damn sure her emotions outrank his at present. "Clichés are cliché for a reason – don't knock me for it."

"I could knock you for turning me into a zombie instead?"

"And I thought we'd moved past that."

_No, you didn't_, she could say. He's not an idiot, after all, much as he might like to snark his way around admitting any intelligent motive or all-around-sneakiness. Liv tilts her head. Sketchiness? Sleaziness. All of the above. "Are you going to tell me what you want, or should I start shooting?"

His chuckle sounds like a scratched record. "Weren't we dropping that metaphor?"

Eyes narrowed, she tightens her jaw. He's laughing at her again. Not audibly, of course, but it's written into every line of his face. "Blaine." Her tongue drags its tip quick against her upper lip. She almost never says his name. It crowds her mouth.

Skin sallow beneath the morgue's pale lighting, Blaine props himself onto the counter, feet dangling and back loose. "Can't a brother check in on his unlife partner?"

Liv frowns. "No."

"No?"

"Partner? Sure. Drug dealing compulsive liar, not so much."

He mimes a dagger to the chest. Absurdly, Liv wants to imitate the gesture. Stab him. Kill him. Tranquilize, immobilize, erase him, so long as she can return to her admittedly pointless wallowing.

_Because she'd had a wedding dress, one she'll never wear now, one that was every bit as perfectly tailored as the new Mrs. Lilywhite's. _

_Because, even though it was silly and pubescent and ridiculous of her, she'd thought about the way 'Liv' sounded next to 'Lilywhite' more times than any med student should admit._

_Because she'll never hear it._

There's a mind-grating blitheness to his voice when he asks, "Is this about the fiancée?"

"Ex-fiancee." She counts the syllables to keep them cold.

His tongue clicks against his mouth, as he kicks himself from the counter, one step closer to her. "Well, I'd hope so. Given the wedding and all. Beautiful reception, by the way."

At the her furrowed brow, he clarifies, "Facebook. Amazing what you can learn about someone's life with a few clicks and a Wifi password."

"I'm fine." Liv's hands twitch for a cell phone to check, a book to flip through, a dead body to cut open. Anything to smother Blaine from her sight, and her attention from his grip. "And, even if I wasn't, why would I tell you?"

Amused sympathy creases his face. Liv's nails tense against her wrist. It's fake enough – _he's_fake enough – to flavor a Twinkie. "Who else are you going to tell?"

The echoes of neural tissue clang against her undead taste buds. He's right. Ravi? A possibility. Maybe. Already vetoed. Major's ex-roommate, ergo Major's friend, ergo conflict of interest. Peyton? She cringes. Clive? Her jaw grinds.

Hard to whine and wallow over your ex-fiancée when you can't explain away the prefix.

So, instead, Liv holds her half-empty bowl of brains up to Blaine's view. "Mimi Williams. She's very understanding."

Blaine examines her companion with a purse of his lips. "You know, I've got a few recipes kicking around if you want something more gourmet. Straight brains," disgust flexes his mouth into a flat line, "it gets old."

"I don't need anything from you." She snaps the bowl back to the tabletop, grimacing at the jiggle the brains sway with the motion. Food that_jiggles_– she didn't get the appeal when her mom was pushing tufu at her by the dish, and she doesn't get it now.

A step closer to her. "It's not about _need_."

"Exactly. It's about making me owe you."

Blaine blinks, pauses, and succumbs to a burgeoning snicker. "Has anyone ever told you that you are a profoundly cynical individual?"

Liv widens her eyes. "The last time I didn't trust my gut, I ended up at a boat party where you scratched the life out of me. So, congratulations, you can take credit for that one."

He's barely a foot away from her when a groan mottles his laughter. "And I would take it back if I could." He's close enough that his hand extends easily to her shoulder in a cool pulse, a facsimile of friendship. "The least I can do is whip you up a cookbook. Free of charge."

"I don't want a cookbook," she grits, shaking his palm-lines from her skin. His touch curdles her. He's too cold, too fake, too – a long gulp claims her throat. Too able to touch her.

Liv tilts her head, inches a toe closer to him. Too safe for her to touch.

Subject of her internal revelation or not, Blaine appears to register none of it. "That's your problem," he's rambling. "One zombie scratch, and you decide to stop living. Give up on your dream job – not," he gestures to the morgue with a sweeping, white arm, "that I don't admire your practicality here. Genius. But the fiancée…" he hisses a breath. "That was cold."

Liv snaps back into the conversation, a glare narrowing her gaze. "As opposed to the loving warmth of accidentally turning him into a zombie."

"So cup half empty…" Less than a foot away from her. "Romance really is dead, huh?"

She wants to slap him. She's also a pragmatist. Sure, it would be easy to claim that any attraction to his wide grin or fine cheekbones is the result of Mimi Williams's questionable taste, but Liv can admit that Blaine Debeers is, objectively speaking, an aesthetically pleasing individual.

Plenty of assholes are.

Hedonistic bastards are also, she's been told, often quite gifted in bed, once you get them to shut up.

Liv's mouth dries. _Okay, girl_, she exhales silently. _Time to talk yourself off the ledge of a pathetically poor judgment-lapse here._

Fact one: Blaine is a conniving, sleazy, undead jerk.

Fact two: She does not trust him.

Fact three: She - has not had sex with anything that didn't vibrate in over six months.

Her teeth clamp down hard on her lower lip. Bad idea. This is still a bad idea. This is still a horribly awful, horribly stupid idea. But, then again, eternal abstinence isn't sounding all that much better.

Fact Four: Major had smiled hard enough to generate electricity when he saw Corinne walking down the aisle.

Fact Five: She has good reason to believe that Blaine has no problem with a good old fashioned one-night-stand – 'good reason' referring to the party at which he attempted to grope her into just that.

Fact Six: She _knows_she shouldn't trust him. Liv is plenty of things, but she's not walking into this doe-eyed and naïve.

She doesn't allow herself to ask 'walking into what' until Blaine's chest is – unnecessarily – heaving a mere inch from hers.

Raising her red-rimmed eyes, she only just manages to discern the slight part of his lips, the pink glimpse of a tongue visible between them.

He opens his mouth.

If this were a suicide leap, he'd be her Golden Gate Bridge of ledges.

Liv holds her breath, and jumps.

* * *

It's been years since she's kissed anyone other than Major.

It's been months since she's kissed anyone at all.

And maybe it's just that. Desperation. Or maybe it's the undead status she's earned in the interim, but kissing Blaine is… oddly affecting.

His mouth moves against hers on instinct at first, cold and hard and probing. Arms knotted around his neck, Liv tugs him down closer, until he's craning, bent, tottering. She tugs again.

She wants him to fall. She wants to swallow him whole.

His hands settle around her hips, massaging thumb print circles against her cotton dress.

Liv's teeth scrape against his lower lip when he slackens a breath away from their attack. "Just to be clear," he murmurs against her Cupid's bow, "you're not going to slap me for this later?"

"No."

"Wake me up in the middle of the night with a chainsaw? Try out a bit of zombie cannibalism?"

"Again. No. But if you don't stop talking, I might reconsider my stance on bodily harm."

The curve of his mouth falls against hers. His grip rises around her hips. "Violent. I like it."

He, she learns quickly enough, gets off on his own share of violence too. Kissing Blaine is a jagged experience of harsh touches and harsher teeth.

Sometimes, it's her teeth. There's something thrilling about suckling at his neck, his lip, his jaw. She can bite him, scratch him, hurt him as much as she pleases, without gaining one worry line over potential zombie infection. So she does.

They freeze together, a flurry of pale skin and cool fingers. Hers grind against his back, yanking at the creases of his shirt until Blaine pulls it straight over his head with a quick breath. It arcs, falls, disappears. His mouth is on hers again before she can care where.

Writhing against him, Liv clenches a path of crescent moons against the fake tan blushing against his spine. He brands himself against every speck of her skin he can reach – her jaw, her neck, her collarbone, the hint of her chest exposed by her dress's scope neck.

Said dress isn't any grand obstacle. His fingers curl around its hem, regardless, lifting it over her head, discarding it into the nowhere land of his t-shirt.

"We should have locked the door," she murmurs against his tongue.

She feels the spike of his eyebrows in the muscles of his face. "That ashamed to be seen with me?"

"Stop talking." At least, Liv reasons, she's unlikely to be seen with him. The morgue's list of midnight callers is usually nonexistent, and unlikely to grow beyond two tonight.

Unless the universe hates her.

She's beginning to think it just might.

But Liv shakes that from her mind when Blaine obliges her demand, lifting her trembling knees into a straddle around his hips, and forcing her flat against the cramped table of the even-more-cramped kitchenette. Her head lands just beside the few nibbles of brain tissue left to her bowl. Legs crooked around Blaine's lithe waist, bare toes curling together, Liv hardly notices it.

Leftovers seem somewhat inconsequential next to the weight of Blaine, the pressure of him, the slow grind of his hips against hers. She drags her fingers through his hair, through the white blonde locks that match her own so closely. His teeth nip at the thin skin of her neck, a squeeze to sharp to be playful.

She drags harder.

It's her fingers that eventually drag at his zipper, that pull the denim spanning his legs lower and looser. She suspects he planned it that way; that he wants her to remember that she pushed this, started this, wanted this.

The seeds of a moan stunt her breath. His fingers move from the beads of her nipples to massage their way down her body, scratching and soothing until they reach the nude silk of her underwear. (Its pale tan, once a match for her fair skin, now looks bronze against the starch white he's made her.)

His fingers disappear beneath its too-dark cover.

Her knees tighten around him.

By the time she registers the loss of her underwear, its slope down her thighs and past her ankles, he's between her legs once more.

Liv makes sure to scratch him hard for her every scream.

The morgue's air conditioning buzzes. Her phone vibrates a pulse into her bag (a text from Peyton, she'll learn later, asking where the hell she is.)

All she hears is his groan against her throat.

* * *

(Afterwards, she tells him that this will never be happening, will never be spoken of, again.)

(His lips curl.)


End file.
